Inspiration from an autistic student ... for those who are interested!

I'm a substitute teacher, and for the last few days the school I'm working for has taken me out of my math element, and placed me in a resource class for high functioning autistic teens. You would have no idea that 3/4 of these kids are autistic, but they possess an inability to learn like "normal" loss.kids.

Anyway, I've been in this class for a few days now and have gotten to know many of their back stories. One of the young men is a large kid, in a very healthy way. When I got around to talking to him ... He had a pretty cool story.

This kid is an 18 year old senior, with a 3.5 gpa... and when I asked him how he does it when his classmates couldn't focus, he told me by lifting weights. Many of you may have heard the "autistic children are really good at one thing" claim ... well for this guy it was the case. He told me that reminding himself that he can workout after school was enough to keep him motivated throughout the day. When he got off track, he'd make up his workout plan and visualize it until he could concentrate again.

Anyway, thought that was pretty neat and inspirational for some of you guys. I guess working out really is good for the mind!

That's a neat story about a really cool kid who has found an amazing way to work through his own deficiencies. Thanks for sharing it BakoJock14 and keep up the good work with your students the world needs good passionate teachers.

It's a nice story...I am afraid though that with the changes to the Autism spectrum being debated, classes like the one you've been placed in may well become a thing of the past.

Granted, we've not heard everything...but it seems to be driven largely by insurance companies and politicians who, motivated by fiscal considerations, would like to cut services for "high functioning Autistic" (primarily those with Aspergers and PDD-NOS) peoples.

If they only realized that this is just going to lead to increased diagnoses of OCD, major depression, anxiety disorders and so on!

That is pretty awesome! I'm always really inspired by people who have big mental disabilities, diseases and physical limitations to overcome. It puts things in such a good perspective for me cause I tend to get so caught up on how much I really got, and how easy it is to actually do things for myself.